The Dragon Fist Tornament
by DrBonkers
Summary: Mei Ling faces her biggest challenge to date.  Rated M for later chapters.  Anzu is my own property.  I do not however.own Mei Ling.
1. The Preliminaries

"Welcome to our annual tournament of the Dragon Fist, we have many contestants from all over the world ready and willing to participate in this gruelling tournament, and what, might you lot ask, is the top prize? Why, none other than $10,000. Now, we shall be getting the tournament underway very shortly with the preliminaries up first, and those who pass those rounds shall then move onto the quarter finals, from there, the winners of that round onto the semi finals, and of course, from there, the winners shall move onto the final fight!" the announcer called out from his megaphone as he stood in the middle of the ring.

Each of the participant were watching on with much enthusiasm, well, most of them were, those that weren't, they were clearly taking this tournament much more seriously.

A certain snow leopard stood there, her arms folded as she eyed each of the participants that were present in the tournament "They are all children…" she muttered. Granted, they weren't actually children, however, they were still young regardless. Although, the snow leopard was still young as well, but sure was older than most that were present.

Her eyes moved through the participants still before they stopped upon one in particular. She was a mountain cat, but her name eluded the snow leopard. What else that was interesting about the mountain cat was that she too was taking things rather seriously as well.

And in the moment that it took for the snow leopard to look at the mountain lion, the two of their eyes met, as if they started to now study each other.

The first contestants were called to the stage, one name being Mei Ling, while the other being Drake. The two took to the stage and the fight begun. The snow leopard watched the fight progress. The mountain cat was indeed, one of the fighters in the ring, to be precise, she was the one known as Mei Ling and the snow leopard was taking an interest in her fighting ability. She seemed promising at the very least, to which the snow leopard smirked.

Mei Ling then, shortly after the fight had begun, knocked out her opponent, allowing her to advance to the quarter finals. She passed the snow leopard and spoke one thing to her "Good luck…"

The next group of contestants were called up, Anzu and Ajax. The snow leopard took her place next to a brown bear. It was obvious that the snow leopard's name was Anzu. Sure, the brown bear looked intimidating to the average person, but Anzu just looked at him with a smirk upon her face "This should be fun…"

The gong went off as Ajax cricked his neck before rushing at Anzu in attempt to grab her. Anzu ducked underneath the grab and struck the brown bear in the jaw, followed up with a kick to his knee in order to bring him down onto one knee.

"Sorry, you maybe big and strong, but you are rather slow, and this is, after all, a kung fu competition, and you do need to be quick on your toes after all" Anzu spoke as she leapt off her feet in a forward motion to do a full forward somersault as he legs struck him right in the head, bringing Ajax down onto his stomach with a crash "Game, set and match"

"Uh, I'm not too sure what just happened, but it looks like Anzu is the winner!" the announcer called out as Anzu stepped off the stage.

She walked over to Mei Ling and simply smirked to her "Luck had nothing to do with that match, it's called skill, maybe you should try getting some at some point, that performance you gave back then, not all that impressive"

Mei Ling, at first, was a bit taken back by Anzu's little insult, but yet, she did snap back herself, with, what she believed was, a witty remark of her own "Oh, I know, I mean, why bother showing off some skill to a bunch of amateurs? Why not save all the skill to show off in the final round?"

"That all depends on if you actually make it to the finals or not, cause as for me, I plan on getting there, one way or another, even if I have to use all my skills to get there" Anzu told Mei Ling as she looked out to the next fight of the preliminaries getting under way.

Mei Ling gave off a light smile "Then I guess I'll see you at the finals then, cause I do plan on getting to the finals and winning"

Anzu chuckled slightly "Very well, if you say so…" she gave off a slight smirk before walking off away from Mei Ling, not even worrying about who was to win the fight that was going on, to her, it just simply, did not matter at all.


	2. The Quarter Finals

**Chapter 2: The Quarter Finals**

The following day, the quarter finals were about to begin, with those whom had qualified for the quarter finals, on standby until they were to be called up into the ring. Both Mei Ling and Anzu were standing around, the two of them at different sides of the ring, yet, they seemed to be eyeing each other as well.

It didn't even take long for the first fight to get underway, yet, lucky for both Mei Ling and Anzu, neither of them were called up just yet. They were just two other fighters that were in the tournament.

Anzu's eyes diverted to the fighters in the ring, watching their moves carefully, in case she were take on either of them in the semi-finals.

However, Mei Ling, for the time being, continued to keep her eyes upon Anzu, keeping her thoughts to herself all the while "_She seems determined to win this competition, at all costs for that matter, should be fun to fight her though, although, I do hope I get to fight her sometime_" she gave off a smile to herself as well.

It didn't take long for the fight to finish with the victor of the match, staying in the ring for a moment longer before stepping out of said ring.

Moments later, the next contestants were called up, Anzu being one of them, to which she complied in doing so, stepping into the ring and looked at her opponent, a male leopard, which caused her to smirk as he moved into a stance straight away.

Without a word, she moved and started to strike as the other leopard started to block each of her moves with much ease, yet, Anzu only smirked all the while, keeping up with the leopard she was facing off against.

"Ready to give in?" the male leopard asked her rather smugly.

"What's the matter? Can't actually keep up? Starting to tire are we? Cause if I really wanted to, I could just as easily end this match, but why should I when we're giving our audience a good fight?" Anzu continued to smirk still.

"What are you talking about?"

Anzu sighed somewhat at the leopard's question. She only very quickly glanced at the audience before speaking "I suppose I could end this fight a bit earlier than I had first anticipated, but do me a favour first…don't blink, or you may miss it"

The male leopard cocked his head to the side slightly and that's when Anzu struck, knocking his arms out of the way, long enough for her to be able to land a few consecutive strikes to his chest, which in turn, caused him to stumble backwards.

She swept her feet along the ground, knocking him off his feet before bringing an elbow down onto his chest, slamming him down into the ground in the process.

"Uh, I'm not sure what just happened, but I believe that Anzu is the winner" the announcer called out as Anzu stepped off the stage.

She walked past Mei Ling and spoke only one thing to her as she did so "Top that"

Mei Ling gulped slightly "_Okay, maybe she does have some skill after all_" was all that was going through her mind as she waited for her name to be called next.

Sure enough, Mei Ling was called to the stage to face off against her opponent, a chameleon. She had to concentrate, not let how Anzu was doing, put her off, she needed to make it to the finals.

Anzu stood by and watched as the match started, carefully analyzing Mei Ling's movements on how well she was doing in said match. Surprisingly enough, Mei Ling did do better than what Anzu had first anticipated. But of course, the question still remained, would she do well enough to make it to the finals?

The winner, in turn, was called out moments later, which did not surprise Anzu in the end. Mei Ling had indeed, made it to the semi-finals "Don't get so full of yourself kid" Anzu spoke as Mei Ling approached her "You still have a long way to go…if you make it past the semi-finals and into the finals, then I might very well be impressed, but until then, just…don't loose focus"

Mei Ling had to at least think on what Anzu was actually on about, however, the moment she looked back to Anzu, only to realize that she was already gone. But that didn't stop Mei Ling from following Anzu to the changing rooms.


End file.
